Of Potatoes and Fond Memories

One of the things I love about my Facebook community is how other people are so willing to share their own stories there. When I posted this picture on my Facebook page the other day, one reader told me about how her father tried (and failed) to convince her and her siblings that potatoes were treasures to be dug up during harvest season. This triggered some of my own memories of growing up with an avid gardener for a father–such as the first year he had his little John Deere tractor…

I’m not sure how Dad managed to convince my mother to move four teenagers twenty miles out of town to a twenty-acre property where they built another (their fourth) house, but he did. Of course, then he decided he needed a tractor for plowing up a garden, and she gave in on that, too. And then he plowed up three and a half acres for said garden. (In case you’re not familiar with an acre as a land measure, it’s a lot of land. A lot.)

We planted many things that year: broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, carrots, beets, peas, beans, onions (even though he personally hated the latter and refused to have them in the house, he thought they were fun to grow)…and yes, potatoes. Three hundred pounds of potatoes, to be exact.

By the end of that summer, we were harvesting (and shelling) peas by the garbage-bagful (yes, the giant black plastic ones), my mother was staying up until two or three in the morning pickling, blanching, and freezing vegetables (and then getting up at five to go to work), and we had resorted to giving away the broccoli that we could no longer use ourselves. And then…then we started digging up the potatoes. And do you know how many pounds of potatoes you harvest after planting 300 lbs worth?

Three. Thousand. Pounds.

Enough to cover the entire floor of our oversized double garage, and then to fill sixty 50-lb sacks.

But wait…it gets better! That same summer, my uncle got married and my parents hosted the reception at our house. I will never, ever forget the day when our baker friend came over to decorate the wedding cake…as my mother was pickling beets and freezing the two enormous bags of peas that we were shelling…all in the same small kitchen at the same time. When it was all over, it took another two hours to scrape off the hardened icing and wash away the sticky, bright purple pickling liquid from cupboards, walls, stove, sink, and floors.

Yes, I had an interesting upbringing at times.

Yes, my mother was a saint.

And yes, dad downsized the garden the next year. 😀